The Astronomy of the Bible, E. Walter Maunder [the reading strategies book TXT] 📗
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In these four standards we cannot fail to see again the four cherubic forms of lion, man, ox and eagle; but in two cases an addition was made to the cherubic form, an addition recalling the constellation figure. For just as the crest of Reuben was not a man only, but a man and a river, so Aquarius is not a man only, but a man pouring out a stream of water. And as the crest of Dan was not an eagle only, but an eagle and a serpent, so the great group of constellations, clustering round the autumnal equinox, included not only the Eagle, but also the Scorpion and the Serpent (see diagram, p. 189).
There appears to be an obvious connection between these devices and the blessings pronounced by Jacob upon his sons, and by Moses upon the tribes; indeed, it would seem probable that it was the former that largely determined the choice of the devices adopted by the four great divisions of the host in the wilderness.
The blessing pronounced by Jacob on Judah runs, "Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?" "The Lion of the tribe of Judah" is the title given to our Lord Himself in the Apocalypse of St. John.
OPHIUCHUS AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.ToList
The blessing pronounced upon Joseph by Moses bears as emphatic a reference to the bull. "The firstling of his bullock, majesty is his; and his horns are the horns of the wild-ox."
Jacob's blessing upon Joseph does not show any reference to the ox or bull in our Authorized Version. But in our Revised Version Jacob says of Simeon and Levi—
And in their self-will they houghed an ox."
The first line appears to refer to the massacre of the Shechemites; the second is interpreted by the Jerusalem Targum, "In their wilfulness they sold Joseph their brother, who is likened to an ox." And in the blessing of Joseph it is said that his "branches (margin, daughters), run over the wall." Some translators have rendered this, "The daughters walk upon the bull," "wall" and "bull" being only distinguishable in the original by a slight difference in the pointing.
Of Reuben, his father said, "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel;" and of Dan, "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."
These two last prophecies supply the "water" and the "serpent," which, added to the "man" and "eagle" of the cherubic forms, are needed to complete the traditional standards, and are needed also to make them conform more closely to the constellation figures.
No such correspondence can be traced between the eight remaining tribes and the eight remaining constellations. Different writers combine them in different ways, and the allusions to constellation figures in the blessings of those tribes are in most cases very doubtful and obscure, even if it can be supposed that any such allusions are present at all. The connection cannot be pushed safely beyond the four chief tribes, and the four cherubic forms as represented in the constellations of the four quarters of the sky.
These four standards, or rather, three of them, meet us again in a very interesting connection. When Israel reached the borders of Moab, Balak, the king of Moab, sent for a seer of great reputation, Balaam, the son of Beor, to "Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel." Balaam came, but instead of cursing Jacob, blessed the people in four prophecies, wherein he made, what would appear to be, distinct references to the standards of Judah, Joseph and Reuben.
And as a lion doth he lift himself up."
Then again—
And as a lioness; who shall rouse him up?"
And in two passages—
He hath as it were the strength of the wild ox."
The wild ox and lion are obvious similes to use concerning a powerful and warlike people. These two similes are, therefore, not sufficient by themselves to prove that the tribal standards are being referred to. But the otherwise enigmatical verse—
appears more expressly as an allusion to the standard of Reuben, the "man with the river," Aquarius pouring water from his pitcher; and if one be a reference to a standard, the others may also well be.
AQUARIUS AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.ToList
It is surely something more than coincidence that Joseph, who by his father's favour and his own merit was made the leader of the twelve brethren, should be associated with the bull or wild ox, seeing that Taurus was the leader of the zodiac in those ages. It may also well be more than coincidence, that when Moses was in the mount and "the people gathered themselves unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him," Aaron fashioned the golden earrings given him into the form of a molten calf; into the similitude, that is to say, of Taurus, then Prince of the Zodiac. If we turn to St. Stephen's reference to this occurrence, we find that he says—
"And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven."
In other words, their worship of the golden calf was star worship.
It has been often pointed out that this sin of the Israelites, deep as it was, was not in itself a breach of the first commandment—
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
It was a breach of the second—
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them."
The Israelites did not conceive that they were abandoning the worship of Jehovah; they still considered themselves as worshipping the one true God. They were monotheists still, not polytheists. But they had taken the first false step that inevitably leads to polytheism; they had forgotten that they had seen "no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto" them "in Horeb out of the midst of the fire," and they had worshipped this golden calf as the similitude of God; they had "changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass." And that was treason against Him; therefore St. Stephen said, "God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven;" the one sin inevitably led to the other, indeed, involved it. In a later day, when Jeroboam, who had been appointed by Solomon ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph, led the rebellion of the ten tribes against Rehoboam, king of Judah, he set up golden calves at Dan and Bethel, and said unto his people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." There can be little doubt that, in this case, Jeroboam was not so much recalling the transgression in the wilderness—it was not an encouraging precedent—as he was adopting the well-known cognizance of the tribe of Joseph, that is to say, of the two tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, which together made up the more important part of his kingdom, as the symbol of the presence of Jehovah.
The southern kingdom would naturally adopt the device of its predominant tribe, Judah, and it was as the undoubted cognizance of the kingdom of Judah that our Richard I., the Crusader, placed the Lion on his shield.
More definitely still, we find this one of the cherubic forms applied to set forth Christ Himself, as "The Root of David," Prince of the house of Judah—
"Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof."
FOOTNOTES:[187:1] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, III. vii. 5-7.
CHAPTER V LEVIATHANThere are amongst the constellations four great draconic or serpent-like forms. Chief of these is the great dragon coiled round the pole of the ecliptic and the pole of the equator as the latter was observed some 4600 years ago. This is the dragon with which the Kneeler, Hercules, is fighting, and whose head he presses down with his foot. The second is the great watersnake, Hydra, which 4600 years ago stretched for 105° along the celestial equator of that day. Its head was directed towards the ascending node, that is to say the point where the ecliptic, the sun's apparent path, crosses the equator at the spring equinox; and its tail stretched nearly to the descending node, the point where the ecliptic again meets the equator at the autumn equinox. The third was the Serpent, the one held in the grip of the Serpent-holder. Its head erected itself just above the autumn equinox, and reached up as far as the zenith; its tail lay along the equator. The fourth of these draconic forms was the great Sea-monster, stretched out along the horizon, with a double river—Eridanus—proceeding from it, just below the spring equinox.
HERCULES AND DRACO.ToList
None of these four figures was suggested by the natural grouping of the stars. Very few of the constellation-figures were so suggested, and these four in particular, as so high an authority as Prof. Schiaparelli expressly points out, were not amongst that few. Their positions show that they were designed some 4600 years ago, and that they have not been materially altered down to the present time. Though no forms or semblances of forms are there in the heavens, yet we still seem to see, as we look upwards, not merely the stars themselves, but the same snakes and dragons, first imagined so many ages ago as coiling amongst them.
The tradition of these serpentine forms and of their peculiar placing in the heavens was current among the Babylonians quite 1500 years after the constellations were devised. For the little "boundary stones" often display, amongst many other astronomical symbols, the coiled dragon round the top of the stone, the extended snake at its base (see p. 318), and at one or other corner the serpent bent into a right angle like that borne by the Serpent-holder—that is to say, the three out of the
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